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One problem with VMware under Linux is their ability to keep up with kernel revisions. As VMware users, we've become used to having to apply various third-party patches to the official host and/or tools sources every time the kernel is updated.

The open-vm project has helped a lot in this, but there is still noticable lag at times.

This is not a big problem for Gentoo Linux users. The last time I had an issue was with the kernel 3.1-rc* releases, but someone had a patch for openvmtools. I ran the following command, which fixed everything:

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VirtualBox is great. Never had any problems with the kernel module and I've been using it since the first 2.x releases. That's more than I can say for VMWare, which has caused several issues (including stopping the keyboard from working, kernel panics on suspend and other things).

I haven't tried VirtualBox so I can't comment on that. The keyboard problem with VMware I've encountered is that it loses track of the Ctrl/Alt/Shift key status so they can get stuck when focus changes back to the host desktop. This tends to happen more often when there are multiple VMware guests running. Simply running "setxkbmap" fixes it. I add a launcher for it on the Gnome panel so I can just click it with a mouse.

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VirtualBox is a great piece of software. I'm not sure what people are ranting about it considering its:

- free
- gpl
- has plenty of great features
- very very very easy to use and configure
- excellent network features and configurations

Michael, in servers environments do you really think someone really cares about 2d/3d? I use vms for other type of things, like apache services, primary domain controllers, proxies , ldap databases, and other stuff.

Between constant broken USB support and crappy IOMMU support (as well as several other little annoyances) I would rather pay for VMWare. VM's are not only used for VM server purposes, they are used quite a bit for development as well.

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Just posting to say that indeed I've experienced major file system and memory corruption when trying to use Gentoo in Virtualbox as a development machine. I'd be lucky to make it through a single kernel compile.

After loosing so many filesystems (it literally trashed them beyond repair), i've switched to VMware. No more problems.

It's a shame Oracle doesn't put more support behind Virtualbox to get the quality up to standards. Have you looked at the frequent changelogs? They are a disaster if you care about stability.

Vmware's biggest problem is the lack of frequent updates to follow the latest kernel. But if you don't need to be on the bleeding edge, it works great.

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Could have just shorted the title to "VirtualBox is Crap" as far as I'm concerned. It will do in a pinch if absolutely no other options are available.

VBox works for me and most likely the issues are due to bugs getting exposed as kernels get updated. maybe oracle is slowly poisoning vbox so that it could die a slow death so people would use its own crappy offerings??

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VBox works for me and most likely the issues are due to bugs getting exposed as kernels get updated. maybe oracle is slowly poisoning vbox so that it could die a slow death so people would use its own crappy offerings??

You are assuming that one always upgrade their kernels. Production boxes usually don't run the "latest and greatest" they run "stable, tried and true". Versionitis is a terrible thing to have an production systems especially when many times a kernel upgrade doesn't have any changes that would effect a system running an older kernel. Even so I have experienced fewer breakages with VMWare even after going through a kernel upgrade (yes a patch is needed a lot of times but it is a relatively painless procedure.

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vbox or vmware are well running linux under windows . recently i use vmware 7&8 and it is real good when it comes to have 64bit working with a 32bit win xp . i use mostly mksquashfs to compile the live file , it seemed and continue to seem with new xp x64 as fast as under plain linux
i switched to xp x64 and vmware 8 , the new vmware is largely better with the usb stick than previous .
n.b. : running win 7 x64 under xp was nearly impossible

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This is not a big problem for Gentoo Linux users. The last time I had an issue was with the kernel 3.1-rc* releases, but someone had a patch for openvmtools. I ran the following command, which fixed everything:

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Just a quick(ish) comment as a member of the VirtualBox development team. I have only used VMWare a couple of times, so I won't comment on them or on comparisons to them (though I see that there are enough people with strong opinions in either direction, so I suspect there is an element of one failed to work as well as the other in some given situation). I do think though that Dave was a bit quick with name calling when he started the LKML thread. If you read his first post, it starts "The number of bug reports we get from people with virtualbox loaded are truly astonishing." Given that our kernel module is usually loaded when our software is installed, even if it is not currently in use, it is hardly surprising that people occasionally have kernel oopses when the module is present. I'm sure that some are related to our module (particularly as many people still use old versions with known issues), but assuming that even a large minority are is quite a jump.

Other than that, I'm very sorry that VirtualBox didn't fit all previous posters needs. Obviously there is always a bit of pressure between being conservative with new features and still providing the features everyone (and our customers!) want. I realise that IOMMU is still work in progress and that USB is not always problem-less (USB devices tend to be finicky creatures, just ask some of the people writing drivers for device classes!). Those wanting less features and more stability might note that we are still maintaining the 4.0 and 3.2 series. And people having issues with some particular kernel setup should note that we are open source and accept patches